THE DIRT

Today in New York City, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres will convene the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit to, in his words, “hear about how we are going to stop the increase in emissions by 2020, and dramatically reduce emissions to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century.” This Summit comes on the heels of the Youth Climate Strike last week, and kicks off Climate Week in which people in New York and across the country will demand action to mitigate the ongoing climate crisis.

As the world’s leaders gather in New York this week, ASLA calls for all governments convened at the Climate Action Summit to adopt national policies that incentivize investment in nature-based solutions to help communities adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis, with a greater focus on the disproportionate impacts faced by vulnerable and underserved communities.

While it’s encouraging to see international leaders finally thinking seriously about resilience, sustainability and climate change mitigation, I’m extremely proud to say that I belong to an organization and a profession that has been protecting our planet since 1899.

Since our founding, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has advocated for nature-based solutions to reduce coastal, inland flooding and the urban heat island effect; improve air and water quality; protect and enhance biodiversity; and support human health and well-being through universal access to nature.

ASLA has always been a vehicle for landscape architects not only to protect and expand our livelihoods, but to advocate for those values we hold as a profession. The Kresge Foundation found ASLA to be one of just nine organizations that have “adopted a holistic approach” to educating their members and the public about climate change “that includes adaptation, mitigation, and the explicit consideration of social justice.”

In 2017, ASLA convened a Blue Ribbon Panel on Climate Change and Resilience that produced a report called Smart Policies for a Changing Climate. The report identifies the following core principles, key planning and design strategies, and public policies that will promote healthy, climate-smart, and resilient communities.

And we didn’t stop there. Just this year, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, ASLA opened our Smart Policies for a Changing Climate Exhibition and website – a demonstration of 20 case studies that show the report’s recommendations at work. From Boston’s multi-billion dollar investment to protect itself from sea level rise and severe storms, to Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Promenade, which is designed to contain greater floodwater, to New Orleans Redevelopment Authority’s community adaptation program, these cases are just a few across the country and around the world that showcase how landscape architects can us nature-based solutions to mitigate the effects of a changing climate.

ASLA is also a proud signatory of the We Are Still In Declaration. The declaration, signed by 63 cultural institutions and 3,800 leaders representing 15 million Americans and $9 trillion of the U.S. economy, relays our continuing commitment to the goals outlined in the international Paris Climate Agreement and America’s contribution to it.

World leaders are finally coming around to what we at ASLA have long known: nature-based solutions are advantageous to our communities, our environment, and the health of our world. They:

• Are largely more cost-effective and resilient than engineered “grey” solutions for protecting communities against sea level rise, higher temperatures, and increased flooding.
• Have many co-benefits like improved community health and well-being.
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the advantage of our environment.
• Create well-paying, local green jobs.

When a member joins ASLA, they agree to a code of environmental ethics that states they will make “every effort within our sphere of influence to enhance, respect, and restore the life-sustaining integrity of the landscape for all living things.” This, to me, is the Hippocratic Oath of a landscape architect – one that we live every single day, in every project we take, in everything we do. It is my earnest hope, and the hope of ASLA as an organization, that the leaders gathering in New York today will heed the calls of climate strikers, scientists, and people around the globe to take bold action and protect our planet from the perils of the climate crisis.

Shawn T. Kelly, FASLA, President, American Society of Landscape Architects